Ray Hernández-Durán

Associate Professor, Early Modern Ibero-American Colonial Arts and Architecture

Ray Hernández-Durán completed his B.A. and B.F.A. at the University of Texas at Austin, his M.A. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his Ph.D. at The University of Chicago. He is Associate Professor of Spanish Colonial Art and Architecture in the Department of Art. His specialized courses focus on the visual and material cultures of the Indo-Hispanic Americas from 1496 through 1898, with research concentrations, geographically, in New Spain/Mexico, and historically, in the 18th- and 19th centuries. Among the various courses he offers outside of the colonial area are included, baroque art and architecture, nineteenth-century Mexican art, arts of Spain, U.S. Latinx art, the arts of sub-Saharan Africa and the African diaspora, Museum Studies, and Historiography and Methods. His work appears in such publications as, Revista de História da Arte e Arqueologia, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide: Visual Cultures of the Nineteenth Century, Nineteenth Century Studies: The Interdisciplinary Journal of the Nineteenth Century Studies Association, Hacia otra historia del arte en México, Religion as Art, Woman and Art in Early Modern Latin America, Buen Gusto and Classicism in the Visual Cultures of Latin America 1780–1910, The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs, The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, and Encyclopedia of Mexico: History, Society, and Culture, among others. His book, The Academy of San Carlos and Mexican Art History: Politics, History, and Art in Nineteenth-Century Mexico (Routledge, 2017) will be followed by a second monograph, A Historiography of Colonial Art in Mexico, ca. 1855–1934 to be published by the University of New Mexico Press. Ray has been the recipient of various awards throughout his academic career, including: a Title VI F.L.A.S. Fellowship to study Brazilian Portuguese in Brazil, a Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad Fellowship to study and conduct research in Nigeria, a second Title VI F.L.A.S. Fellowship to study Yoruba at UW-Madison, a Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Fellowship to conduct research in Mexico City, a MacArthur Fellowship to fund his position as MacArthur Fellow in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to support a speaker series on colonial art, and most recently, a Fulcrum Fund grant from the Andy Warhol Foundationto support the production of an exhibition catalogue and a speaker series for an exhibitionhe curated as part of programming for the 2017 Way OUT West Film Festival. Rayis affiliated with the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute, Latin American Studies, and the Latin American and Iberian Institute, andworked as an Interim Curator at the University of New Mexico Art Museum (2014–2016). He was a member of, both, the AP Art History Development Committee (2008–2012) and the AP Art History Curriculum Review Committee (2010–2012), andserved on the College Art Association Conference Committee (2010–2013). He co-founded the Colonial Studies Working Group and the Interdisciplinary Methods in Colonial Studies colloquium, both, with support from the LAII. In 2006–2007, he initiated and helped found the graduate student journal, Hemisphere: Visual Cultures of the Americas, which is produced in the Department of Art and for which he has served as chief editor and is currently faculty advisor.

Here is a link to a review of Ray’s book, The Academy of San Carlos and Mexican Art History: Politics, History, and Art in Nineteenth-Century Mexico (Routledge, 2016) by Claudia Mattos Avolese (member of the faculty at the University of Campinas, Brazil, and a visiting scholar at Harvard University), published in Journal of Art Historiography (December 1, 2017): https://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/mattos-rev.pdf